Soulless Blues
by Connie Mnemonic
Summary: In the City of Angels, a brooding vampire and an angsty hunter are both missing their souls.
1. Beverly Hills Feds

**Notes: Set in _Angel_ Season 1 (sometime between "Somnambulist" and "Prodigal") and _Supernatural_ Season 6 (directly after "Live Free or Twihard")—with some changes to the canon to get them to mesh. For the most part, I'm using Buffyverse monster lore. Thanks for reading! I really appreciate all comments and critiques.  
**

* * *

When the Impala passed within city limits, Dean forced a grin. "City of Angels," he said. "Sounds like a bad idea to me."

Sam stared at the road ahead. "It's a case."

"Right." Dean cranked up the stereo volume and listened to Jeffrey Lee Pierce sing about his passion for heroin. He knew it was pointless to make conversation, pretend that things were the same between them. That hadn't kept him from trying every day since Limestone. Better to struggle with the small shit than keep replaying the same few scenes in his head. The werewolf sinking its teeth into his neck. Sam pausing, watching, the hint of a smile on his lips.

Now Sam switched the music off. "We need to discuss strategy."

"What's there to talk about?" Dean's hands clenched on the wheel. "We play FBI, we find this bloodsucker, and we gank it. Aren't you all about simplicity these days?"

Silence stretched out for a minute. The outskirts of Los Angeles lay before them, all fast food signs and hotel chains. Dean had almost expected something different here. A more obvious dark side than they could find in any city across the country. Maybe he'd watched too much noir on hotel TVs as a kid, seen too many trenchcoated detectives crawling through the city's seedy underbelly.

It had its share of evil, sure. Otherwise they wouldn't have driven hundreds of miles to see a corpse with bite marks on its neck. But it looked like the same kind they faced everywhere, monsters crawling out of sewers, spilling blood. Right now, he was more scared of what his brother had become. Or what wore his skin.

"I need to know you're ready for this," Sam finally said. "That's all."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm worried about you, Dean." His tone was flat. "Your head hasn't been in the game lately. Maybe you should let me do the heavy lifting on this one."

A dry laugh burst from Dean's throat. "You're worried about my head. That's rich."

"I just mean—"

"And while you go and take care of our case, what am I supposed to do? Go to Disneyland?" He glanced over at Sam, who stared out the window, no expression on his face. He might've been planning how to betray Dean again. He might've been thinking about lunch. There was no way to tell. At least the Devil had laid all his cards on the table.

Sam shrugged. "Forget I said anything."

"Yeah, sure." Dean swerved across two lanes to make the turn-off. Somewhere out there stretched the Hollywood sign, the unimaginable houses of the rich and famous. They'd finish this case, he told himself. They'd kill the vampire. Then he'd figure out what to do about his brother.

. . .

Detective Kate Lockley was not having a good day. She had a case on her hands that nobody on the force was qualified to understand, much less put to rest. She had a pounding headache and a good idea who the killer was. The last thing she needed was a visit from the Feds.

The two men walked into the station around four in the afternoon. One looked like a hick, and the other had awful hair. "I'm Agent Holden, and this is Agent Beatty," the hair said, holding out his badge. "We're here about the Jane Doe you picked up on Tuesday."

"We're pretty far from D.C., Agents. You think this crosses state lines?" Kate wondered how many other officers across the country had covered up fang marks on bodies. Some of them had to slip through the cracks, end up on the desks of high-level criminal profilers.

The hick's brow wrinkled. "Afraid we're not at liberty to say."

"Well, then, I don't see how I can be of much help."

The hair smiled thinly. There was something cold about him, worse than she'd felt around any Fed before. "We'll just need to see the body."

"It's all yours. But I believe we have this case well in hand." Kate drained her coffee. She couldn't stand to look him in the eye any longer.

"With all due respect, Detective," the hair said, "isn't this the precinct where all the officers got high and opened the jail cells a few months ago?"

"That was an unfortunate accident," she said.

"I'm sure."

Behind his partner's back, the hick flashed her a sympathetic smile. So he was Nice Fed. The pair of them could star in a goddamn buddy cop movie. Kate foisted them off on her least favorite underling and headed into her office. As soon as she sat down, her hand reached for the key in the pocket of her jacket. Instinct now. She opened the drawer and pulled out the files, although she hardly needed to anymore. Whenever she closed her eyes, every sordid detail of Angel's kills scrolled through her head. Angelus's. She used to think there was a difference.

She flipped to the last few pages. They were filled with her own notes, everything she could remember from the times that she and Angel had talked. He had never given her much. Maybe he'd known that one day they'd be enemies. She ran a hand through her hair, greasy to the touch. Since the body had come in two days ago, Angel's little message to her, she hadn't bothered much with hygiene or sleep. It couldn't have been a coincidence that it turned up in her beat.

It was too bad about the Feds. There was a reason she didn't want to remember their names. Nobody who hunted Angelus came out of it alive. She just hoped that she could do some damage first.

. . .

The victim was a blonde woman, junkie thin, with needle scars tracing down her arms. In the morgue, while Sam inspected the body in unnerving detail, Dean leafed through the coroner's report. It looked like a typical vamp kill, apart from the cross on the cheek. Bloodsuckers weren't usually fans of those. He turned the page and found a set of photos of other corpses, earlier ones, each with the same cross cut in the skin. "Says here it's a copycat killer."

"Maybe," Sam said. "Or maybe the LAPD just doesn't know how to put down a vampire."

Dean nodded, then looked up at his brother. There hadn't been any surprise, or even curiosity, in his voice. "You knew about them," he said. "The other four murders."

Sam prodded at the bite mark on the woman's jugular.

"Did you know two months ago? When they were happening?"

"I was busy."

"You were busy." He couldn't keep the disbelief out of his voice. "You were _busy_. Too busy to send another hunter? To make sure it was taken care of?"

A muscle twitched in Sam's jaw. "Maybe you haven't noticed, but people are dying everywhere. We can't save them all." He tossed the sheet back over the corpse. "Besides, we're here now."

Dean turned away. As much as he wanted to, he couldn't say anything more. He'd made similar excuses himself for all the time he'd spent with Lisa and Ben. A stupid mistake. There was no way it ever could've worked out. The way she'd looked at him at the end—afraid. It stuck with him.

The scents of ammonia and death hung in the air. He tried to force his thoughts back to the case. Fear. There was something in that, something that hadn't registered before. "That lady cop," he said. "She seem kinda off to you?"

"I guess she was pretty uptight."

"She was scared," he said. "Dead scared. And angry. Could see it in her eyes."

"Yeah?" Sam stripped off his gloves and tossed them in the trash. "You work that angle. I'll go check out the place they found her."

Dean nodded. "Sounds like a plan." So Sam wanted him to take the backseat. He'd play along for now. It made his skin crawl just to stand next to him, knowing what he did. Some space between them and a talk with Bobby might be for the best. When they stepped out of the morgue together, he still felt the chill.


	2. LAPD Confidential

The hick was back. Kate glimpsed him through the window and let him stand outside her office for half a minute before she slipped the files back into her desk and opened the door. "Any problems, Agent?" she asked. "I thought you just needed to see the body."

He scowled. "Yeah, sorry about that. My partner, he's …"

"A dick?" Some part of her brain registered that talking to a Fed like that wasn't the best idea, but she no longer cared. It wasn't likely that she'd live long enough to face disciplinary action.

The corner of his mouth twitched upward. "I was gonna say 'a bit on edge,' but yeah, that works too."

She'd run into his type before. They got by on charm as far as they could and bullshit when the charm ran out. If she let him do the talking, they'd be standing there all day. "Listen, Agent. Beatty, was it?" She crossed her arms. "Good Cop, Bad Cop doesn't generally work on cops. If you want more information, just ask. I'm legally obligated to tell you."

"I'm Good Cop. Jesus Christ." It seemed to take him a moment to process that. He rubbed his temple. "Yeah, actually. Report says you were the one who took down the last guy. Penn."

"Sure was." Her headache kicked into overdrive. Covering that one up had been hell. It was hard to close a case with a bunch of dust instead of a body.

"Right. Uh." He cleared his throat. "Any chance we could talk in private?"

That didn't sound good. Maybe someone up the ladder had noticed a few discrepancies in the paperwork. Kate opened the door wider. It wouldn't really matter if they kicked her off the case. The police didn't have the tools to deal with Angelus, and she'd promised herself that she wouldn't pull anyone else into the deep end with her.

Beatty let the door shut behind him. Sunlight streamed through the window and fell on his face. In the past couple of months, Kate had started noticing things like that. "Look," he said, "I hate to bring up bad memories. But you gotta tell me if there was anything you left out. Something he said, something he did."

"As he abducted me from the station and dragged me into the sewers, you mean." The pain as the monster threw her against the wall. His fangs hovering inches from her face. "No, just your standard psycho. He didn't mention any followers."

"Uh-huh." He paused for a second, rubbing his neck. "This might sound kinda strange, but where's he buried?" He must have seen Kate's shock on her face, because he clarified, "Maybe his copycat wants to pay his respects. Wouldn't be the first time I've seen."

She braced herself. "He was cremated." It was almost the truth.

"All of him?"

That wasn't the follow-up she'd expected. "Of course. I don't keep trophies."

"I didn't mean, uh." He had the grace at least to look sheepish. "Sorry to waste your time, Detective."

"Right." She started towards the door. If she left now, gave some excuse, she could scout out Angel Investigations again. Maybe she wasn't the next on his list. Maybe he'd try to kill his friends first.

Beatty remained planted in the center of the room. "You ever wonder why he went after you?"

"Not really," she said. "I was hunting him down, and people like him don't tend to like that."

That made him laugh, for some reason. "Sounds about right." He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a business card. "I get the whole lone wolf thing, but it might be easier to catch this son of a bitch together. I've seen some pretty strange things in my time. Just give me a call if you'd like my help."

She took the card and turned it over in her hand. It felt cheap. If the Feds had come to her precinct any other day, she knew, she wouldn't have just accepted vague words about confidentiality and seeing strange things. Now it all came together. They made a good team, the hair and the hick. They'd almost made her think they were incompetent. She looked Beatty in the eyes. "I know what your game is."

He laughed again. It sounded forced. "My game?"

"I imagine your bosses are smart enough to pay for the real thing." She smiled grimly. "How much does it cost to buy a Fed, anyway?"

"Trust me, I wouldn't know."

She pushed open the door for him. It sickened her, those sociopaths in the tall building playing with the people below like pawns. "You tell Wolfram and Hart that they won't be getting any help from me."

If Beatty were innocent, he'd pull his rank and cross-examine her about what she meant. He'd either explain why he was interfering with her case or pass her questions up to someone in a fancier office. Instead he just shook his head. "No idea what you're talking about, lady."

"Get out." Kate glared at the hick until he obeyed, his face still twisted into a mask of confusion, and she shut and locked the door behind him. Sometimes she wondered where they found them all, so many people ready to sell their souls for a pile of cash. The desperate and the crazy, they made some kind of sense. They passed through the station every day. The lawyers were something else.

She sank into her chair and swallowed an Advil. For a fraction of a second, when Beatty had handed her the business card, she'd wondered if he might've been on her side. Like some fucking Agent Mulder. But this brave new world Angel had shown her didn't work that way. The people who knew things here were either corrupt or doomed, and Wolfram and Hart topped the list of the former in the city. She ran over the last hour in her mind, trying to figure out how the hick and the hair were operating. If they meant to take Angelus out of the picture, eliminate the evil competition, then she wished them the best. May they all die in a Mexican standoff. It seemed more likely that they'd make him a job offer.

Beatty's questions still didn't make much sense. Maybe he'd just dwelt on Penn and his undead remains to frighten and distract her. Or maybe—and she hated that this was even a possibility—there was some voodoo link between Angelus and his baby vampires.

Wolfram and Hart's army would never find a handful of Penn dust in the sewers, anyway. She'd have to follow her own leads and hope that they didn't get to Angelus before her. There was still some light in the sky, like the last pinch of sand at the top of an hourglass.


	3. Motel California

A few blocks east of the police station, Dean spread apart the thin motel blinds to look at the sun. Just a couple hours until the vamps came out to play. "Come on, Bobby," he said, "you can't mean you got nothing." He'd been waiting all day for this chance to call, hoping that maybe Bobby would've found a clue. Some legend about resurrections gone south that didn't involve living on brains or bodily fluids.

The older man's gruff voice came over the phone. "Hey, there ain't exactly a manual for this kinda thing."

"This is Sam we're talking about."

"You don't think I know that?"

Dean rubbed his temples and sat down on the bed. The mattress springs creaked. "It's like half the time he's overcompensating, giving me the big sad eyes, and the other half he's just given up the act. You should've seen him today. Cold."

"I'll keep digging. What about the case?"

The case. For once in his life, he could barely bring himself to care about it. One more loose vampire in the world didn't really stack up against his little brother coming back wrong from Lucifer's cage. "Definitely a bloodsucker," he said. He thought of the detective's weird accusations. "You ever hear of some guys named Heart and, uh, Wolf-something? Wolfrun? Wolfrum?"

"Well, that's specific. What, are they vamps? Victims? Celebrities you spotted?"

"No idea. Some crazy cop lady thought I was working for them."

Bobby grunted. "I'll do a couple searches, but you might just have to put in some legwork on that one."

There wasn't much else to talk about. They said their goodbyes, and Dean fell back onto the bed. His muscles ached with exhaustion. It hadn't been good for sleep, wondering who or what was lying ten feet away. He tried to focus on the case. The cop had looked nervous the whole time they talked, even before the conspiracy theory came out, and he still didn't know why. A big city detective couldn't piss her pants whenever the Feds came calling. If she'd told the truth, the last vampire was dead—but most vamps didn't just fake rigor mortis and let themselves be incinerated. Either she knew more than she was saying about vampires, or the Penn case had gone F.U.B.A.R. and the cops somehow thought they could lie about a killer still on the loose.

He should've pressed her harder, he guessed. But there was something he liked about Kate Lockley, liar or not. She was scared as hell and still didn't take any shit. Almost reminded him of Jo.

The phone rang. When he took the call, Bobby started talking.

"I just thought of something for the Sam problem. A real long shot. This hunter disappeared in L.A. a few months back."

That made Dean sit up. "What the hell? Weird hunter deaths would be a good thing to tell me about before I road trip with the Son of Sam."

"I didn't say he died, idjit. He quit the game. Had some kinda breakdown, maybe. Tell the truth, it sounds like he wasn't all there to begin with."

"Great. Another crazy ex-hunter. And this is gonna help us how?"

"Garth met him out in Phoenix. This guy wouldn't say a thing about where he came from, but he knew things about the lore that our boy never heard of. Says he was a real help taking down a demon."

"'Cause if Garth hasn't heard of something, it must be real secret." The kid meant well, sure, but he'd been trained as a dentist.

"Don't be an asshole," Bobby said. "I'm throwing you a bone here."

"All right, all right." It wasn't as if he had any better leads. He'd already scoured every page of Dad's book and read too many old German stories about doppelgangers. Sam had carried his laptop along with him to the crime scene, so he couldn't even turn to that for help. "What's this mystery man's name?"

"Wesley Wyndam-Pryce."

"What?"

"He's English."

. . .

Bobby gave Dean the Brit's number, but his calls went straight to voicemail. He didn't bother leaving a message. With his luck, something nasty could have taken the ex-hunter down, and he didn't want to give anything else in that city a reason to kill him. He walked downstairs and waited at the front desk. The lobby smelled faintly of mildew and some too-sweet perfume.

A pimply kid shuffled out of the back room. "Everything all right?" he asked.

"Everything's great," Dean said. He'd only had to squash two cockroaches since they'd checked in that morning. "I've got a question, though. An old friend of mine works here in the city for Wolfrun and Heart, and I was thinking about dropping in, saying hi. You know where I'd find him?"

The kid shrugged and glumly turned to the computer on the desk. After about a minute of typing, still staring at the screen, he said, "Your buddy's a lawyer?"

"Uh, yeah."

He looked him up and down for a second, a faint smirk on his face. "It's Wolfram. Wolfram and Hart. You want a phone number?"

Bratty kid. Dean had thought he seemed respectable enough in the suit. "Just the address is fine."

The kid wrote down the name and address on a piece of paper and slid it over the desk. A case in the lobby held a bunch of tourist brochures, and Dean flipped through them until he found one with a decent map. The place was too far away to walk. Probably in a better part of town, if they could potentially buy a federal agent. As he walked out to the Impala, he turned the new information over in his head. Cops and lawyers didn't mix. No surprise there. But there was no reason he could see why a law firm would want to get mixed up in a case with a dead—or undead—defendant. Monsters generally didn't bother with the legal system.

Maybe the cop was just paranoid. But if he'd learned anything in his life of hunting, it was that most of the time, they really were out to get you.

He turned on the ignition and slid a Warren Zevon tape into the deck. Halfway out of the parking space, his phone rang. For a second, as he dug into his jacket pocket, he felt a sense of dread. It had to be Sam, calling with some new plan. When he saw the name on the screen, he let out a breath of relief. He turned on the speakerphone and kept driving. "Hey, Bobby."

"Wolfram and Hart, it's—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Law firm. Way ahead of you, old man."

Bobby snorted. "You know it's evil, right?"

"Like I said, law firm."

"I've read up on a few of their cases." He sounded serious. "They take the worst kind of scum and set them loose. The people who fight them tend to have little accidents. That's their business model, and it pays."

"Shit," Dean said, "don't tell Sam about this. He'll send in his resumé."

"Just don't piss them off without an escape plan."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

He didn't have any kind of plan when the call ended, but traffic was slow. In the fifteen minutes it took to reach the firm, he managed to scrape one together. It was a strange office building, with floors that narrowed as they rose higher, like a flight of stairs. Or a pyramid. It didn't take much imagination to guess at what they worshiped. If only Sammy were there, he caught himself thinking. He'd be in his element. Back in his little brother's college days, Dean had resented the way he'd tried to escape the family, but he'd still felt kind of proud. He'd been such a smart kid. If he'd kept studying, if all Hell and Heaven had just stayed off his back, he would've become more than a match for the bastards in that building.

But Sam wasn't there for him anymore. Maybe he wanted to shoot for a double—turn Dean into vampire chow this time around. Fool him twice, et cetera. He parked the car and headed into the building alone.


	4. Repo Thing

Cordelia ran her hands through her hair and groaned.

Wesley's head jerked out of the book he'd buried it in. "Are you having a vision?" he asked. "Do you need a glass of water?"

"Oh yeah, and this one's a real doozy." His eyes widened, and she glared at him. British people were supposed to be good at sarcasm. "I saw that if we sit in this tiny room any longer, Angelus isn't the one you'll have to worry about. Because I'm going to snap. Just to make things perfectly clear."

He sighed. "We're the first ones Angelus would target."

"After Buffy. And assorted civilian snacks." She stood up and stretched, and her fingers touched the ceiling. It felt greasy. "I promised him I'd be there with the pointy sticks if he ever got bitey again. I don't really think this is holding up my end of the deal." She leaned over the few feet to the window and opened the blinds. Neon signs shone from the sad liquor store across the street. If something killed them in that hotel room, it could take a while for a maid to find the bodies.

Hiding had made sense in the beginning, when Angel had disappeared and Kate told them about the murder victim. While Cordelia liked to think of herself as a problem solving type, when it came to fight or flight, she'd always go with the less fatal option. But it was supposed to be temporary. They'd get Willow to do her witchy thing and re-curse Angel, or worst case scenario, bring out the big guns and invite the Slayer herself. Killing Angel was kind of Buffy's shtick, after all. It turned out not to be that simple. Big surprise there. Until they knew the exact status of Angel's soul and what flushed it out of him, not even the Wonder Nerd could put him together again. And they couldn't sic Buffy on a target that could be anywhere.

Forty-six hours of quality bonding with Wesley later, she was beginning to regret her choices in life. For instance, becoming friends with a cursed vampire. Probably a bad decision all around.

"We have to figure out what we're dealing with before we set off willy-nilly," Wesley said. "You're sure he seemed quite stable on Tuesday morning?"

"He was our old mopey avenger, all right." They'd gone over the events what felt like millions of times. Angel had said that he wanted to check on something downtown and headed into the sewers. Not a promising lead-up to a moment of perfect happiness. "But who knows? Maybe he saw a flower growing from a crack in the sidewalk and realized that the world is full of beauty and wonder. Hello, enlightenment, goodbye, soul."

"This is serious, Cordelia."

"Trust me, I'm—" A sharp stab of pain hit her between the eyes, and she doubled over the desk. So the Powers That Be had finally decided to give them a clue. About time.

"Cordelia," Wesley repeated, sounding annoyed. "Cordelia?"

"I'm serious," she said through clenched teeth. A picture began to form in her mind. Something silver and blocky.

"Oh—oh dear." Wesley's voice seemed very far away.

She lay still for a minute, the pain ebbing in and out, before she managed to speak again. "Silver thing. Uh, phone. It's a cell phone." Even behind her closed eyelids, the light felt way too bright. "A really ugly one. You know, one of those old flip phones. Off-brand. Looks like the case is broken." The image faded, and she grimaced. "Thanks, oh mighty Powers, I'm sure that won't be hard to find at all." Seriously, of all the visions they could've sent. She could think of tons of better ones. Angelus standing next to a convenient road sign. Angel locked up in a cage, behind a box labeled, "Evidence for Framing Angel."

When she opened her eyes, Wesley had an odd expression on his face. "That's my mobile," he said.

Poor guy. He was so eager to have something to do, he was grasping at straws. "I've seen your 'mobile.' This is a different crap phone."

"My old mobile. I used it when I was, ah …"

"Watching teenage girls?" she guessed. He glared at her. "Hunting rogue demons?"

"The latter, yes." Secret phones. She hadn't known that Wesley had it in him. He pushed himself to his feet and started working his way around the piles of luggage crowded into their limited floor space. Whenever he reached one of his few bags, he rifled through its pockets. Cordelia moved her legs when necessary. "It's not here," he finally said, dropping his backpack to the ground.

"Ooh, did Angelus steal it? Maybe we could track the signal."

He cringed like a dog caught raiding the trash can. "I didn't pack it."

. . .

"This is the dumbest thing I have ever done," Cordelia said, "and I went to school for four years on top of a gate to hell."

Wesley sighed. "You sound rather happy about it."

She shrugged and swung the flashlight in a circle. Its beam lit up the familiar furniture of the Angel Investigations office. Her other hand tightened around a stake. "Hey, it gets me out of solitary confinement with you."

"Well, some of us didn't think it wise to go on the run carrying several lifetimes' worth of possessions."

She opened her mouth—maybe to say something about the wisdom of using a vampire's home office for storage—but drawing upon her inner reserves of fortitude and restraint, managed to force it shut. Anything could get old after two straight days, even arguing with Wesley. Instead she pointed the flashlight at the closet door. "All yours, Mister Light Packer."

As he edged toward the closet, axe poised over his shoulder, she made sure to illuminate every nook and cranny of the room. Coffeemaker. Ceiling. Blinds. Mirror. Desk. Chair. Wait. She jerked the flashlight's beam back to the mirror hung behind the desk. Vampires didn't show up in them, and Angel had never been exactly human-focused in his interior design, no matter how many hints she had dropped. Angelus had a sick sense of humor. Maybe he'd decided to redecorate.

It was just the kind of thing a vampire would choose, too—fancy dark frame, probably a Transylvanian antique. She wrapped her crucifix around her flashlight hand. They needed that phone, and Wesley was already rummaging around the closet. It might be best to stay quiet about this new bit of creepiness until he found it. She knew one thing for sure, anyway. No matter what, she wouldn't tempt fate by crossing the room and looking in the glass. She'd see only her own reflection, she'd let out a sigh of relief, and then Angelus would turn out to be right behind her. Vampire flunkie or not, she didn't want to die like a horror movie cliché.

"Come on, Wes," she said under her breath.

The closet door slammed shut. They both screamed.

Cordelia's mind jumped to the worst case scenario—soulless vampire ten feet away—until a chair slid across the floor and under the doorknob, trapping Wesley inside. So now they had a ghost. At least she'd dealt with those before.

The door rattled on its hinges. "Cordelia!" Wesley shouted. "Are you all right?"

"It's just a ghost," she said. "Should've brought some salt, but you can't plan for everything. Obviously." She slowly stepped towards the closet. "We're not here to bother you, Casper. We're grabbing an awful phone and getting out. Promise."

Something caught her by the arm and tossed her against the wall. It felt pretty substantial. A second later, as she gasped on the floor, hot breath misted against her ear. So, not a ghost.

"Where's the soul?" a voice asked. The kind of voice that usually came with several rows of teeth.

"Hey, if I knew, I'd tell you." She gathered her strength to jab the stake at the space where she guessed the thing's head might be. It connected with a squelching noise that made her glad she didn't have a visual. The monster roared, and the stake jerked back a few feet in the air before clattering to the floor. Cordelia scrambled in the opposite direction.

Wesley kept shaking the door handle. "What's happening?"

"You have an axe!" She grabbed the first object within reach, some old vase carved with runes that Wesley had been all excited to translate. It held up surprisingly well as a blunt weapon, slamming twice into the monster without a single crack. The third swing hit nothing but air. Claws raked against her cheek, and warm blood welled up. She stumbled backwards and let the momentum carry her over the surface of the desk. The vase fell with her to the floor. Curled behind the desk, she picked up one of its larger shards.

She heard a low, breathy sound. The monster was laughing. Its footsteps slowly padded closer.

Across the room, wood splintered. "Break the mirror," Wesley called out.

That damn thing. She stood up, ripped the mirror off the wall, and hit it against the corner of the desk as quickly as she could. Glass rained down. Success.

When she looked up, the monster smiled at her. It was easy to see why it might choose to stay invisible. The gums were the worst part. "Break the mirror," it said. "Where's the soul?"

She stabbed at it with the shard, but it caught her wrist and twisted. In pain, she fell back against the desk. Now she could watch the thing kill her. Huge improvement. Somehow she'd hoped for something a little more impressive out of shattering a magic mirror. "Listen, buddy. I. Don't. Know."

It leaned closer. The stench of its breath was like rotten eggs. "Listen, buddy," it repeated. Something silver flashed through the air, and its head flew off.

There were some upsides to having friends with demon-slaying experience. She and Wesley watched the body crumple to the ground. It stayed dead. He grinned down at the axe, purple blood dripping from its blade. "That worked well, don't you think?"

It took a few seconds for her heartbeat to settle to anything close to normal. "Uh, yeah."

"Bavarian craftsmanship. Worth every penny, I say." He looked at her and frowned. "You're hurt."

She massaged her wrist. It was sprained, not broken, and the cuts on her face were shallow. They'd probably knock her out of the running for that role in the antidepressant commercial, but she wasn't great at pathos anyway. "Nothing worse than usual."

"It's not a poisonous breed, at least," he said. "Borges demon. Mirrors hide it from sight."

At the moment, demon taxonomy didn't interest her so much. They could deal with the mess on the floor another day, if they lived that long. "You have the phone?" He nodded. "Let's get out of here."

. . .

Outside, in the twilight, Cordelia ran over what the creature had said. "Weird, right? Why does some demon care where Angel's soul is?"

Wesley frowned. "Borges demons aren't particularly clever. They can't even speak original words. Somebody must have sent it here."

Could've been the lawyers who hated them so much. Could've been some cult that worshipped the god of stubbed toes and needed a special soul to bring him into the world. At some point, inexplicable shadowy forces became the norm. They walked away from the building and took turns watching the street for cabs and the alleyways for vampires. "You turn on that phone yet?" she asked.

"It's not charged." Her eyebrows rose, and he held up his hands. "I have the charger."

"Good." Maybe the Powers That Inspire Suicide Missions would end up helping them after all. She wasn't counting on it.


	5. LA Lawless

The building was made of money. Glossy tiles. Real potted plants. Windows from floor to ceiling. It made Dean want to grab a baseball bat and get to work trashing the place. Instead he walked up to the front desk and pulled out his latest badge. "Agent David Beatty," he said. "I'm in this town on a police misconduct case. I hear Wolfram and Hart has been harassed by certain members of the LAPD. If any of your lawyers want to talk, I'll listen."

"David Beatty," the receptionist repeated. She sounded doubtful. "Do you have an appointment?"

"It's urgent." He cleared his throat. "FBI business. Recent lead."

She flashed him a perfect smile. "Okay. Let me see if we can fit you in." Before he could say anything more, she picked up her phone and made several calls in a tone so soft that he could barely pick out any of her words. "Agent," he heard. "Police." "I see." A minute of this passed. She held out the phone to him. "Mr. Manners, head of Special Projects, would like to know the names of the suspects you're investigating. You may count on his discretion."

"Uh, right." He took the phone and stepped back a few feet. "Mr. Manners?"

"Agent."

"The suspect in question is Detective Katherine Lockley."

"Give me a moment," the man said. "I think we might have something for you."

The line went dead, and Dean handed the phone back over the desk. As the silence stretched out, the receptionist kept smiling. It was disturbing. The phone finally rang and pulled her attention elsewhere. "Yes," she said. "Yes. I see." She ended the call and turned The Smile back to him. Her teeth actually sparkled in the artificial light. "One of our attorneys would be happy to speak to you. His name's Lee Mercer. You can find his office on the fourth floor."

"Thanks."

It was a relief to get away from the desk, but only for a second. He was still stuck inside a blatantly evil law firm while his brother and a bloodsucker were both on the loose. A trio of lawyers in the lobby stopped talking and stared at him as he passed. He took it as a compliment. They didn't mistake him for one of their own.

He rode the elevator up and found Mercer's office. Compared to the big show they put on downstairs, it wasn't much to look at. The lawyer came to the door with a frown already etched on his face. Dean guessed that if he were a weaselly guy with a receding hairline, he'd be unhappy, too.

"Agent Beatty," Mercer said. They shook hands and stepped inside his office. "I hear you're investigating Kate Lockley."

"Sure am." He sat down across the desk from Mercer. The chair was uncomfortable—on purpose, probably. Made sure that none of the guests forgot who was in charge.

"I have a very full schedule, so I can't talk for long. But I can verify that Lockley has frequently treated my clients in an extremely unprofessional manner."

He moved closer, balancing on the chair's edge. "How extreme are we talking?"

A hint of satisfaction crept into Mercer's expression, the smug look of a kid about to tattle. "Where to begin? She verbally assaults them. She physically assaults them. She brings in associates outside the police force to cross the law in ways that she doesn't dare. Are you going to record this?"

"Uh, well—"

"Please do. I want all of it on file."

. . .

Mercer's schedule couldn't have been as full as he'd claimed, or else his hatred of the cop overpowered all reason. Twenty minutes later, Dean had no new leads on the vamp case, but plenty of reasons to respect Kate Lockley. Anyone who took on the richest and most well-connected scumbags out there was all right in his book. He was interested in the "associates" who might've helped her, but when Mercer came to that point, his story turned vague. He made up for it with more details than any real Fed could possibly want about Kate's antagonistic tone and body language.

When it became clear that Mercer wasn't going to let slip anything about the firm's possible supernatural interests, Dean made a show of turning off the recorder. "Thanks for your cooperation. This should really help our case."

"I hope so." Mercer smiled thinly. "That woman thinks she's some kind of vigilante."

"Well, we sure can't have that."

As he stood to leave, Mercer held up his hand. "Holland said he wanted to talk to you after we finished up here."

"Holland?"

"My boss, Holland Manners. Great guy. He's up on floor six."

The head of Special Projects. He wondered how special they were, exactly. On his way to the great guy's office, he took the stairs. Bobby had told him to have an escape plan, and it could pay to know all the exits. Before he left the stairwell, he checked his phone—no messages, no missed calls—and his gums—no unusual bumps. Less than a week since the werewolf bite and Samuel's sketchy cure, he figured there was still a chance of relapse. Course, if he turned in that building, it might be a service to humanity.

At the end of the sixth floor hallway, Holland Manners's door stood open. The older man at the desk looked up with a warm smile and waved him in. "Dean Winchester. Nice of you to stop by."

Maybe he should've thought out that plan in more detail. His hand moved to the pistol at his belt.

"I'm sorry about that nonsense with Lee. Your cover was so perfect for him, I thought I'd let you two chat. Had no idea he'd tie you up so long." Manners leaned forward, as if telling a friendly secret. "He's a hard worker, but not the brightest bulb out there."

"How the hell do you know who I am?"

"Don't worry, it wasn't easy. You're supposed to be dead several times over." Manners tapped a thick file on his desk. "I admire your perseverance. Especially after that end-of-the-world debacle."

He stood in the doorway, unsure whether to talk, shoot, or run. A good detective could uncover the Winchesters' arrest records and death certificates. He wouldn't name-drop Armageddon. "So what are you? A demon? Some asshole angel?" Something about the lawyer reminded him of Zachariah.

Manners chuckled. He sounded like somebody's grandfather. "Oh, that Judeo-Christian stuff is just a flash in the pan. We've got no horse in that race," he said. "All of us here are human, Dean. Just like you."

"Yeah? That's great." He pulled out the pistol. It was loaded with rounds of holy water, but with luck Manners wouldn't know that. "Sorry if I don't feel comforted."

"If you want to leave, no one's going to stop you. But there's a saying about the enemy of my enemy." Without so much as a glance at the gun, Manners motioned to the empty chair across from him. "Please, sit down. I guess you're here about the vampire."

This wasn't how Dean liked to operate. He had a glove compartment filled with fake IDs for a reason, and he would've rather watched his back against Sam the Sham than a cliché-spouting bastard in a suit worth more than his car. Still, he'd come this far already. He wasn't about to retreat at the point when he might finally get some answers, truthful or not. He walked into the office and let the door shut behind him. The wide office window showed L.A.'s artificial lights beginning to stand out against the evening sky.

Manners held out a sheaf of papers. "He's called Angelus."

"Yeah?" He holstered his gun and took the papers, but didn't sit. On top lay a photograph of a dark-haired man that Dean had never seen before. "This isn't the guy they say did the last round of killings."

"That one's dust. Angelus is his sire. Believe me, our research is thorough. We've tried to deal with Angelus before. He used to be more discreet about his dietary requirements. Lately he's … regressed. Lost whatever semblance of self-control he had." The man grimaced. "He could be a problem for us."

Manners's words were just vague enough to give Dean pause. If the firm knew about the bloodsucker so long, it must've had its own reasons for leaving him alive. He took a minute to flip through the papers. Sickening. "You ever work with this thing?"

"Quite the opposite, actually. He might hold a grudge. And historically speaking, his grudges can get messy."

He landed on a description of what the monster did to some hunter named Holtz. "No shit."

"You aren't going to trust me, of course. Take the file, and feel free to look into it on your own time. I won't insult you by offering to pay." Manners leaned back in his chair. "Unless you have any burning questions, I think we're done here. I've got a wife to get home to."

He had questions, all right. Such as how Manners could know for a fact that it was this one vamp. The M.O. matched, sure, but the undead weren't known for their creativity. Or what exactly set the firm against him, since they looked like a match made in Hell. He knew better than to imagine he'd get a straight answer to any of them. It was past time he got out of that gilded rat cage and on the hunt.

He paused in the doorway to look back at Manners, the paintings on his walls, the city splayed out behind him like another piece in his collection. "Got a real nice place here, don't you?"

"Just applying my skill set." The bastard shrugged. All humility. "I'd suggest you do the same."

. . .

The papers in Angelus's file weren't great for the appetite, but Dean was still starving by the time he finished going through them. After he gave Bobby the alleged vampire's name to double-check, he stopped at some fast food place nearby called Doublemeat Palace. Their burgers were weirdly unsatisfying. He ate three of them before he admitted to himself that he was stalling.

Sitting in the Doublemeat parking lot, he wanted to call Sam. That was what he would've done, any other night with a crazy bloodsucker on the loose. Hell, he wanted to call Lisa. That could only end badly. Instead, desperate, he rung up the ex-hunter again.

This time, somebody answered. "How did you get this number?" He had a deep voice, maybe disguised. English accent.

"We've got a friend in common. I hear you met in Phoenix. Did some pest control together."

A long pause. "Garth."

"Yeah. I'm Dean. Call him, and he'll vouch for me. We're in the same business. Are you?"

"I could be. If the stakes are high enough."

Sounded like typical hunter bullshit, all right. "Yeah, sure. They're plenty high. Look, if you want to talk, I'm at a Doublemeat Palace out on Lagarto."

"I know a better place," the Brit said. "I'll call you with directions in five minutes."

The call ended. If Wyndam-Pryce was smart, he'd probably take Dean up on his advice and check his story with Garth. Still, the further wasted minutes stung. He stared out the window and tried to go over the facts of the case, not picture his brother facing down Angelus alone.


	6. The Big Nap

It was good to be alone. All that acting tired him out, figuratively speaking. "Oh, Dean, of course I'd never let you get hurt." "Oh, Bobby, you're such a great father figure, you're barely an alcoholic asshole at all." Other people were so needy. They sucked you dry in ways vampires could only dream of.

Sam held his pistol in one hand and a stake in the other as he paced the perimeter of the empty apartment building. Two more stakes and a machete hung sheathed from his waist. The building was slated for destruction in a couple weeks, according to the battered sign out front, but it looked like it had been sitting vacant much longer. Graffiti crossed its brick facade, and the windows had gaps where their panes had been knocked out. The sun still cast a few weak rays over the horizon. The vamp would be in the basement, if it was there at all.

The doors were locked. He found a loose window and eased his way through it, careful not to slice his shoes or skin against the broken glass. The procedure felt routine. He'd already stopped at three other places that fit the profile and found nothing but cockroaches and empty bottles. Still, signs pointed to some kind of predator in the neighborhood. There had been two disappearances in the past week, one of which happened days before the dead woman showed up in that other precinct. As the kid he'd talked to up the street had said, the police didn't bother with the poor parts of town unless they had a body. That interview, at least, had been efficient. Nobody here expected to hold hands and get a shoulder to cry on.

Inside the building, traces of smoke and animal leavings mingled with the stronger odor of mold. He made his way through the rooms and hallway, avoiding the light fixtures that looked ready to fall at any moment, until he arrived at the stairwell. Darkness greeted him. He dropped his backpack, slipped a headlamp on, and started down.

If Dean were there, he would've made fun of him for the headlamp.

He had no idea why that thought passed through his mind. If he'd stayed with Dean, they wouldn't be there. He probably would've kept Sam at the police station for hours as he tried to get into Detective Blondie's pants. Unless he was still hung up on Lisa and their white picket fence. Now, _that_ was a joke.

The headlamp's beam darted over the stairwell. He heard nothing but his own footsteps and, somewhere close, the steady drip of water. Floors above, the building settled. Ever since his return from Hell, he'd felt sharper, in complete control of his senses, but that meant little in a vampire hunt. The monster could have smelled him as soon as he entered the building, and it lacked even breath to give it away.

The further he descended, the worse the damp stench grew. The stairs ended in a narrow hallway with peeling paint and pipes snaking across the ceiling. Of the three doors set into its walls, two were locked. He stood still before each one for a moment, alert to every sound. If a vampire waited behind one of them, it was biding its time. A patient predator, clever, not feral. The third door swung open after he jiggled the handle.

He turned his head to cast light into every corner of the shadowed room. It held washing machines and dryers, and nothing hid in the spaces between them. A lone sock still lay on the counter. He was about to turn away and try to force open the other doors when something caught his eye. A red ribbon sticking out of a dryer.

It could be a lure. It could be nothing. Sam stepped into the room and locked the door behind him. The machines didn't look big enough to hold a person, even a dead one, but his muscles tensed as he approached the ribbon. He readied his gun and opened the hatch. It took a moment to process what he was seeing.

Dolls. Someone had arranged them. They sat upright inside the dryer, with a few perched against its cylindrical sides. Some had painted porcelain faces and wore elaborate dresses. Others were simple things sewn out of rags. All they had in common were their blindfolds and bloodstains.

Sam snorted. A vampire with the taste of a teenage goth girl. He should've brought a Tim Burton movie to distract it.

The doorknob rattled. He spun around and aimed his gun. Bullets wouldn't kill a vamp, not even the bullets he'd filled with holy water, but the pain would slow one down. For a second the rattling stopped. Then the door burst inward.

The figure was hazy with only the headlamp's thin beam to illuminate it, but Sam fired twice as soon as the door fell free. It was a woman, he saw, thin and insubstantial. Her body jerked backwards as one of the bullets connected. For an instant he wondered if she was a civilian. That would be inconvenient. But then she straightened, and the light hit her smile.

The holy water sizzled inside her wound. She giggled, high-pitched and girlish. "Is the nasty man bothering my darlings?"

Sam braced himself and fired off four more shots. Three of them hit her in the chest, and the other grazed her shoulder. It should've been enough to put an average vamp in the fetal position.

She looked down at the bullet holes and traced one finger through her blood. "A nasty, _rude _man."

When she swept across the room, Sam was ready for her. He leaned into the attack to drive the stake towards her heart. Unexpected benefit to coming back from Hell different than the way he went in: he was getting pretty close to ambidextrous.

She caught his wrist before the stake pierced her skin and slammed him against the concrete wall. The pistol fell to the floor and out of his grasp. As he struggled to catch his breath, she knelt down in front of him. "I'm Drusilla, rude man." She held out two swaying fingers. "Look at me and say my name."

For fuck's sake. He pulled out another stake and lunged at her. She twisted away and, instead of shifting to the offensive, fell back several paces. "You have no nice dreams for me to take." Confusion filled her voice. She sounded like a child puzzling over a riddle.

He unsheathed his machete and waited for an opening. For the moment he decided to stick to defensive maneuvers. The pain in his ribs could make him misstep, and the vamp was agile. His headlamp remained strapped to his forehead, if slightly askew.

She gasped and clapped her hands. "Oh, you're not ugly!"

"Thanks. Wish I could say the same."

"I'm a princess. All princesses are beautiful." She made no move toward him. Maybe the crazy bitch thought that if she circled around him long enough, her hypnotism ploy would work.

The light caught her looking down for an instant, distracted by something. He swung the machete at her neck. She ducked. Before he could take another strike, she wrapped her hand around his throat and pushed him back over one of the washing machines. Her knife-sharp nails dug into his skin. He gasped for breath. Tried and failed to push her arm away.

Sam didn't want to die, and he especially didn't want to be defeated by some community theater Ophelia understudy. But even now, he couldn't really care about it.

With her free hand, the vampire held up a small velvet purse above his face. "There's a very little man in here. I've been looking for a grave to put him in." Just as his vision started to go dark, the pressure on his neck released. "Will you be my little grave?"

He coughed for a minute. When he managed to push himself up, she stood several yards away. She must've liked to play with her food. "I don't know where you get your pickup lines," he said, gripping a stake, "but I'd suggest trying somewhere else."

She cocked her head and pulled something from her purse. A box. "Graves aren't supposed to be funny."

He took a step forward. She opened the box.

A bright flare of light hit his eyes, and he blinked. Everything was heavy. The stake clattered to the floor. He felt something, inside his head. Something he hadn't felt in a long time.

Tired.

The shadows spun. Cool tile met his skin. The vampire's laughter was the last thing he heard before it all faded away.


	7. Demolition Woman

Kate had never liked Mitchell the coroner. He sighed whenever a new body came in and generally acted more like an apathetic wage slave than a member of the force. Still, she knew better than to antagonize him. He could make her job hell if he wanted. Keeping that fact in mind had never been so difficult before.

Mitchell took a slurp of his latte. It left a bit of foam on his upper lip, not a good look for a fortysomething guy with a beer gut. "Look, I got nothing to tell you."

"Nothing." Kate took a deep breath, released it. Turned her gaze to the inoffensive gray wall of the station basement. "You didn't see or hear anything. At all."

"Hey, they were Feds, right? I don't get what the problem is. They needed their privacy."

And Mitchell had probably wanted a free half hour to visit Starbucks. He got his latte, and Wolfram and Hart's goons got whatever they wanted from the body. "Did they specifically ask to be left alone?"

"They needed their privacy."

"Sure, but—" She paused. There was something weird about the way he'd repeated himself, using the same inflection each time. Maybe it was nothing. She took a hard look at him. His eyes drifted more vaguely than usual, and he didn't sport his customary annoyed lip curl. Half a year ago, she would've guessed he was high. Now she had to consider other options. The hick hadn't struck her as anything more than a practiced bullshitter, but the hair had real psychic creep potential. "Mitchell. Tell me exactly what they said when they came downstairs."

He blinked. "Uh, she said they needed their privacy."

"She?"

"He." He shook his head. Definitely messed up somehow. "One of them."

"Right. Thanks for letting me know." Whatever was going on with Mitchell, and whatever reason the Feds had for investigating, it looked like she wouldn't find it out from him. With luck the cameras might've been harder to fool.

. . .

It wasn't easy for Kate to bluff her way into viewing the security footage. She made some intimations about Mitchell's professionalism that she couldn't have backed up with hard evidence, and the tech stalled for a minute, asking oblique questions, before he gave her access. They had begun to call her crazy, she knew. The strange cases. The new obsessions. Young female detectives were supposed to keep their records clean and their mouths shut. It was only a matter a matter of time before someone said it to her face.

She scanned the footage of the basement hallway from almost an hour earlier, when the Feds had arrived. Nothing screamed supernatural. The hair looked bored while the hick flashed his badge and talked with Mitchell for all of fifteen seconds. He unlocked the door to the morgue and let them in, simple as that. It was on the procedural borderline, but there were no obvious signs that he had been coerced. None that she knew how to detect, anyway. Her headache threatened a comeback. She backtracked on the video, watched it again. Mitchell seemed out of it, yawning and staring at the wall, even before the Feds came calling. The hick cast a couple weird looks at his partner behind his back, worried or suspicious. She had idea what to make of that.

Mitchell had said "she." Probably just a slip of the tongue. She clicked rewind and watched the video speed backwards. Officers passed in reverse through the hallway, business as usual. Until the two strange women appeared in the frame.

Her breath hitched. She paused the video. One woman towered at a height of at least six feet and could've stepped off a runway somewhere, wearing a tailored black suit. The other was Latina and dumpy, closer to five feet and swaddled in something that might have looked decent on a waifish hippie forty years ago. They were obviously civilians. How the hell had they made it through the station? She let the footage play. When the women approached the morgue, Mitchell met them with a disbelieving expression on his face—the same one he wore whenever the detectives asked him to finish a report faster. Then the tall woman spoke.

The footage had no audio, but the visuals were dramatic enough. By the time she stopped talking, all signs of irritation had drained out of the coroner. He moved like a sleepwalker to let them into the morgue.

Kate's frown deepened. This X-Men shit wasn't supposed to exist, much less go down in her building. As the pair passed through the door, the short woman's face turned towards the camera. She was familiar. Not anyone Kate knew, but someone she'd seen before. She stopped the video on that frame and wracked her brain, trying to remember where.

In a minute it came to her. After she'd had her worldview broadened the hard way, she'd scoped out some of the local psychics and other assorted scam artists, just in case. None of them had seemed anything close to real, but this lady had to be an exception. What kind of exception, the surveillance didn't show. She'd have to find out in person.

. . .

Half an hour later, Kate stood on Alejandra Perez's front porch. Plainsclothes, car parked out of sight around the block. She was visiting as a concerned citizen, nothing more. A concerned citizen with a Glock tucked under her jacket. If the tall woman was there as well, she guessed she wouldn't stand much of a chance. They might find her mindless husk drooling and shuffling down the street tomorrow. She knocked.

Waiting, she tried to distract herself with the scenery. The porch was clean, the small lawn well-maintained. A pot of purple flowers sat beside the doormat. In the window hung a small sign—Psychic Readings by Alejandra—nothing that would bother the neighbors. It was a nice facade.

The door opened a crack. The short woman peered out at her. She was middle-aged, her face well-worn with lines. "Hello?"

"Ms. Perez. I'm here for a reading."

A faltering smile. "I don't take clients so late, you have to call tomorrow and arrange—"

When Perez tried to ease the door shut, Kate caught it. "This can't wait." She settled the toe of her boot against the door and pushed. So gentle, it couldn't really be called a kick. Perez's eyes widened. "See, I'm really worried about my future." The woman backed up a few steps, shaking her head. She followed her inside and slammed the door behind her. "Funny thing is, I don't have one. What you were doing in the morgue today, Alejandra?"

Perez looked scared. That was good. Meant she might not have an army of hypnotists on her beck and call. "You're not with them?"

"'Them.' That's pretty vague. I guess it comes with the job."

"You're police." The psychic straightened up, a new gleam of defiance in her eyes. "I never worked for the lawyers before. I don't mess with trouble like that. But they made threats."

"Wolfram and Hart." Big fucking surprise.

She made a vague gesture, an upturned palm. "We all know them."

"Yeah? Some of us know them too well."

"They can't be fought."

She almost laughed. "What did I say? No future."

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Perez looked tired, arms crossed over her chest. Kate could understand the feeling. The small house and its halfhearted attempts at mystical touches—a pashmina draped over the couch, some kind of Aztec print in a dollar-store frame—clearly didn't come from a Wolfram and Hart salary. Maybe the psychic hoped to get a payout now, or maybe they really had threatened her. Either way, the law firm had wormed its way into police business yet again.

Kate's cell rang, making Perez flinch. She ignored it. If the captain asked her where she was, she'd have no believable lie to give him. "I'm not asking you to fight," she said. "Just tell me what you were doing there."

A shudder ran through Perez. "They wanted to know who killed that girl. Sometimes I can know the worst things that have happened to people. Even the dead." Her lips quirked joylessly. "That's all I can do." Kind of a bum deal, if she was telling the truth. She paused for a long moment, and her next words were almost too faint to hear. "He was a monster. A white man, brown hair. I felt him drain the girl's life away. It took a long time. He smiled."

As much as she knew not to trust an admitted Wolfram and Hart pawn, not to mention a career bullshitter, Kate still felt a chill at her words. She'd worked with plenty of trauma victims over the years—herself included—and Perez's tone sounded pretty damn convincing. Penn had been bad enough. Angelus would have to be a nightmare.

"Thanks for telling me," she said. Perez nodded, hand shielding her eyes. Kate figured it best to leave as soon as possible, for both their sakes. Wolfram and Hart could be watching the house or heading there to meet her. On her way out the door, she paused. "Hey, you know anything about the second wave they sent? The Feds?"

"Nothing," Perez said. "I do not want to know."

. . .

The cell rang again as Kate walked to her car. This time she picked up.

"Where the hell have you been, Kate?" Detective Nelson's voice was tight with frustration.

"I'm on my way in. Long story."

"That's all you're gonna say?"

"Just tell me what you've got to tell me, Hal. I'll do penance later."

He sighed. "We've got a match on your Jane Doe. Chick named Leila Jackson. She was in rehab out on Harvard Boulevard. Disappeared around noon that Tuesday."

Kate stopped walking. The rest of what Hal said, something about the rehab staff witnesses, barely registered. They'd found Leila's body and signs of struggle in a shadowed garage close to a sewer. It had made sense, paranormally speaking. But a vampire couldn't abduct a woman across town in broad daylight and carry her to a convenient dining spot.

Somebody was helping Angelus.


	8. The Long Hello

After Wesley ended the call, Cordelia raised her eyebrows. "So, Deep Throat," she said, "where's this special place we're meeting your secret friend?"

He coughed. Like that would cover the fact that he'd dropped his voice down an octave to answer the phone. "Ah, I got caught up in the moment."

"I'll say." She felt a brief flash of relief. For once, the vision had turned out nice and straightforward. The Powers showed her a phone, and lo and behold, they got a call. Simple. Well, except for the demon assassin. Now they had a good reason to leave the hotel again and maybe an ally of some kind. "No worries, I know tons of great places. This Garth, what's he like? Is he a sushi fan? I'm kind of in a sushi mood."

"He called himself Dean, actually. We haven't met." Phone tucked into his pocket, Wesley started loading up on weapons. "Hunters can be quite dodgy, I'm afraid. We'll need someplace secure. Public location, private table."

"I know just the spot."

. . .

L.A. parking sucked, and the scenery made Dean want to cringe. On the walk from his car to the place the Brit had chosen, he passed more douchebags with slicked-back hair and women tottering in stripper heels than he'd see for a month on his normal rounds. None of them would last two seconds against Angelus. Inside his jacket pockets, his hands tightened into fists. The vamp could be starting a slaughter at that moment, anywhere in or outside the city, but the only person he could think about was his brother.

He pulled out his cell phone so he wouldn't look like a psycho, though he doubted anyone would care if he did. "Hey, Cas. I'm fixing to chat about the apocalypse with some crazy English guy. If you're ever gonna tell me what's wrong with Sam, this would be the time."

Nothing. By now, that didn't surprise him. His guardian angel was permanently out to lunch.

He kept walking until he found the address. Passed a string of ritzy restaurants, a few clothing stores that he wouldn't be caught dead inside. All the way, he tried to justify the meeting to himself. Bobby was coming up empty, and whatever had walked out of Lucifer's cage could be bigger trouble than any sadist vampire. Chances were, the Brit wouldn't believe a word he said. And even if it turned out to be a stupid mistake, he'd sure as Hell made much worse before.

He saw the sign up ahead—The Silver Leaf. He was expecting a bar of some kind.

They said that the English loved their tea, but this was taking it a little too far.

. . .

The longer they waited, the more uncomfortable Wesley looked. It was probably the leather pants. Wesley dressed a lot like Angelus when he was trying to be a hunter. He glanced up at the beaded lantern that hung above their table. "I'm just not sure about the atmosphere," he said.

Cordelia rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I know, you want to bro it up with the hunter."

"I don't want to bro it up."

"Then stop whining. This is extremely tactical." She gestured at the decorative screens and hanging fabrics that wound through the tea house, separating the tables. "Privacy. Multiple exits. And most importantly, the intimidation factor."

"Right," he said. "I've always found Orientalism very intimidating."

Better not to ask about that one, she decided. "This is our turf. We're L.A. people now, and he's probably some yokel from the flyover states. He'll hate this even more than you're pretending to." She took a sip of her jasmine green tea. "Think of it as an asshole detector. The first hunter I met tried to skin poor Oz. The second tried to kill me. If this one really wants to work with us, he'll put up with drinking tea and listening to sitar music."

The bell above the entrance rang, and she peeked at it through the slats in one of the screens. A beefcake with a dubious expression on his face had just stepped inside. In his canvass jacket and beat-up jeans, he didn't fit the tea house's core hipster demographic. No werewolf fang necklace—that was a plus. "Well, hello, gorgeous," she said, standing up. "That's my cue."

Wesley cleared his throat. "Don't forget that we're a couple."

"_Never_ say that to me again."

. . .

Even after checking the sign and address twice, Dean couldn't really believe he was in the right place. It looked like an ex-hippie's attic. He walked over to the counter, where some androgynous college kid with a nose ring was putting sandwiches together. A piece of paper taped to the display case said, "Ask about our vegan and gluten-free options!"

"Jesus," he muttered.

"Trying to decide, huh?" A young woman walked up next to him and nodded at the menu sign. There were more kinds of tea listed there than he'd thought existed. "Every time I come here, it's like, oh my God, too many choices. But I love the rooibos."

He managed a grin. She was hot, and a couple years ago he'd have flirted back in a heartbeat. Now she just made him feel old. "I don't know what that is."

"Ha! Fair enough." She leaned over the counter. "Hey buddy, can we get a black coffee for the Marlboro Man here?"

"Hey, I didn't mean—" He stopped short. A large cross pendant hung from her neck, and as her hair fell forward he noticed a cross earring as well. It was all a bit evangelical for someone chatting up a stranger across the room from a large Buddha statue. Maybe she wore them for more practical purposes. "Uh, were you waiting for me?"

"Sure was. I'm Cordelia. Wesley's over there." She jabbed her thumb towards the corner of the room, where he could make out the silhouette of a man through the patterned screen. When she faced him straight on, she revealed a large bandage on her right cheek. "Hope you're not too disappointed. I can't stand grungy bars."

"Just kinda surprised." The Brit hadn't said anything about bringing a friend, and this skinny chick didn't even look old enough to buy beer. No way was she a hunter. Suspicion made his muscles tense, but the jewelry ruled out vampire, at least.

She smirked. "You do have that deer-in-the-headlights look. It works on you."

It seemed everyone in L.A. had some kind of hidden agenda. He owed it to Sam to give these two a chance. When the kid handed over his coffee, he followed Cordelia to the table.

Wesley looked like a history professor with a leather fetish. "Dean," he said with a nod.

"Hey." Could be worse, he guessed. The last ex-hunter he'd met, himself excluded, had worn a psych ward gown. He sat down, reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out a silver knife and an iron cross. Across the table, Wesley did the same.

"What the heck is this?" Cordelia crossed her arms. "Are you going to duel?"

"It's … a hunter thing." Wesley sounded apologetic.

Dean looked between the two of them, trying to figure out what he'd gotten himself into. "All right," he said. He picked up Wesley's silver penknife and made a shallow cut in his forearm, then held the iron cross against it. "I'm playing along. But what's she doing here? No offense, sweetheart," he nodded at Cordelia, "but you obviously don't know shit about hunting."

She snorted. "Oh, wow."

Wesley went through the motions with silver and iron. Not a shifter, demon, or bloodsucker. "If I remember correctly, you're the one who called for help." Well, at least he had some backbone. "And Cordelia happens to be very familiar with the creatures of the night."

"'Creatures of the night'?"

"Is this, like, a demon test?" Cordelia wrapped her left hand around the cross. Her right lay stiffly on the table, maybe injured. "Great. I'm not possessed by one of the Biblicals. But if you think I'm poking myself with your hepatitis knife, you're sadly mistaken."

Wesley winced. "California has quite an exotic monster population. The standard tests don't always apply."

"We usually check for monstery things. You know, horns, fangs, being a dick to people they just met," she said with a smile. "Those are big giveaways."

Dean shook his head. No matter how crazy these two seemed, they had a point—he couldn't ask for help one minute and sling insults around the next. "Sorry. It's been a rough week."

"Aw, the caveman learns." She leaned back and took a sip of her tea. "Just for that, I'll clear things up for you. Wes saved my life a few months back. Poor little wannabe actress, hungry demons, big brave rogue demon hunter, it was a whole thing."

Wesley put his hand on her shoulder. "We felt, ah, a connection, and this city has plenty of monster traffic."

"And there's only one Hollywood," she said.

The couple thing might kind of make sense—adrenaline was a powerful drug—but Dean had to draw the line somewhere. "Wait. You've started hunting." She nodded. "And you're still an actress."

"A girl's gotta have a hobby."

He didn't want to ask which one was the hobby. The pair of them made his own attempt at settling down look positively realistic. "Yeah, well, I'm here on business. Looks like you've got a vamp on your hands."

Wesley and Cordelia exchanged a glance. "A nasty one," the Brit said. "We've been trying to track it down ourselves."

Everybody knew about the goddamn vampire. Dean took a scalding sip of coffee and forced himself to keep talking. Time to lay it all on the line. "That's what brought me to the city. But it's not why I called."

Cordelia leaned forward, shrugging Wesley's hand off her shoulder. "Spill."

"This is gonna sound crazy," he said. "It's my brother. Little over a year ago, he went to Hell. Literally. Not long after, he came back. Living, breathing, passing all the tests with flying colors. But there's something wrong with him. I think he might be some kinda evil I don't know how to look for." It felt strange to talk about his fears to someone other than Bobby, as if just voicing them could bring them closer to reality.

Wesley frowned. "Which hell?"

Weird question. Far as he knew, there was only the one, but maybe he'd have to get more specific. At least the Brit hadn't pulled out the straitjacket right away. "Uh, Lucifer's cage."

"Lucifer! Wow." Cordelia's eyebrows rose. "That's name recognition, right there. Why don't we ever get that?"

"Excuse me?"

Wesley pulled out a notepad and pen. "I apologize for my partner's tactlessness. She's new to all this. Now, when your brother died, was he already corrupted, or did he only partake in the venial sins?"

. . .

Over the next several minutes, Dean walked a fine line, sketching out the Sam situation while revealing as little as he reasonably could about the larger forces behind the curtain. No need to tell a couple of borderline Tinseltown hunters exactly how he and his brother almost ended the world. He kept expecting them to burst out laughing or stare at him in horror, but apart from some curious looks from Cordelia and strangely pointed questions from Wesley, they just listened.

When his story ended, Wesley tapped his fingers against the notepad. "I'm not well-versed in this apocalypse, I must admit, but all resurrections have their consequences. Your suspicions seem plausible."

Cordelia gave Dean a tight smile. "Don't worry, we're pretty good at helping the helpless. Wesley hits the books, I do my thing, and it's great." She paused. "Not that you're helpless, exactly. The problem is, we're a bit busy. Evil vampire and all."

It wasn't like he'd believed they could solve all his problems right away, tell him exactly what was wrong with Sam. He still felt his jaw clench as he struggled to switch gears. A long drink of coffee, and he brought himself to reply. "I've been hitting the books myself. They call this sonofabitch Angelus, right?"

"Yes." Wesley's tone was grim. "The Scourge of Europe. How much do you know about him?"

Maybe the lawyer hadn't just fed him lies. "Only the basics. A real bastard among bloodsuckers. There's a weird century-long gap in his record that needs filling."

Since Cordelia had mentioned the vampire, all the humor and energy had seemed to drain out of her. "You don't know?" she said, curling her good hand around her mug. "He stopped killing people when he got a soul."

"What?" A disbelieving laugh escaped him. By definition, those monsters were just corpses with vampiric demons inside them. "Vamps don't have souls."

"This one did," Wesley said. "A rather unique curse. It seems he's lost it."

"Huh." Maybe they were right; maybe they weren't. With a dead body in the morgue and more bound to pile up soon, the metaphysics didn't interest him much. He shrugged. "Well, lost souls aren't my problem, but I can sure lend a hand with the hunting. You got any leads?"

Wesley sighed. "Not as such. Everything we've tried has fallen through, and by now he could be, well, anywhere."

So they had nothing at all. They couldn't even count on Angelus attacking at night, not when his only confirmed kill had happened in the middle of the day. Dean stared down at the dregs of his coffee. He was missing too many pieces of the puzzle. The soul bit sounded like a joke, and the Brit and the actress were becoming a less convincing couple by the second. They had to be holding something back. "So, what've you tried, exactly?" He nodded at Cordelia. "Anything to do with that patch job you've got there?"

Her hand flew up to the bandage, but for once, her wit failed her. "We, um," she said.

Before she could continue, Dean's phone rang. He glanced at the number and took the call. Tried to keep his tone natural. "Hey, Sam. What's up?" No response. The sound of heavy breathing came through the phone, like a message from some horror movie stalker. Dean's own chest tightened. He stood up, as if that could change anything. "Sam?"

Cordelia and Wesley looked at him, alarm written on their faces. He barely noticed. In that moment, he didn't know what scared him more—the thought of Sam setting a trap, or the thought of Sam hurt, no matter what he'd become.

Seconds passed. They felt longer. Then Sam's voice sounded, trembling. "Dean?"

"Talk to me, Sammy. What the hell's going on?"

"I—I don't know." A long, shuddering breath. "I think I might be a monster."


	9. Sulk Fiction

Dean's hand tensed around the phone. All this time he'd been afraid, but now that Sam had stated the words straight out, he had no idea what to do. "What?" he said. Then a simpler possibility came to mind. Sam was just reckless enough now to let himself become some vampire's dinner. To let himself be killed. Dean felt numb. "You got turned."

"I don't think so," Sam said. He sounded tired. In pain, maybe. Vamps could be good actors. "I don't want to hurt anyone."

"Then you're gonna have to give me some specifics."

"Dean, I need help. I'm sorry. I'm at the motel."

The connection went dead, and Dean stared down at the phone. It had to be a trap. And not a very convincing one, at that. Either Sam had been bitten, or, more likely, he was shooting for a replay of last week's werewolf game. But who was he kidding? He'd still walk right into it. At least it'd get him out of this tea party.

The actress spoke up. "Was that him? Your brother?"

"Sure was." He grimaced. "It's been a pleasure, but I've gotta run. You figure anything out, give me a call."

"Right, great plan. Or, just spitballing here, we could help out," she said. "I bring the moral support, Wes brings the axe."

That would be something to see, all right, the pair of them working backup. The Brit looked more worried than his girlfriend. "What did he say?" he asked with a frown.

"Nothing much. Wants me to meet him at our motel."

The man stood up. "Then Cordelia's right. You have fair reason to think he might have something up his sleeve, and my research won't do you any good if he turns on you first."

Dean hadn't wanted to get them involved in the action. Outside a library, they might become liabilities pretty fast. No matter how much they liked to play at being hunters, they couldn't really want to risk their lives for somebody they'd just met. But he didn't know what he was up against, and he'd made worse alliances before. "Fine," he said. "You can follow me out and wait in the parking lot. Call me six minutes after I go inside. If I don't pick up, you'll know things've gone south."

Wesley and Cordelia exchanged a look. "Six minutes might—" Wesley began.

"I know the risks," Dean said. "I'm going in first."

. . .

He called Bobby on the way out and filled him in on the situation.

"Goddamn," the old man said.

Dean's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "You're telling me."

"You might not get to pull him outta this one."

"I know."

Silence hung between them for a long minute, and then Bobby cleared his throat. "This Angelus looks like the real deal, though I can't vouch for him being in L.A. Books go quiet round a hundred years back."

"The Brit says that's when he got himself a soul."

"Garth sure knows how to pick 'em."

"Yeah." Down the road stood the illuminated sign. He felt a tiredness deep in his bones. "Motel's up ahead. I've gotta go."

"Dean," Bobby said, a warning in his tone, "this ain't a suicide mission."

"I don't aim to make it one." With a glance at the rearview mirror, he found the Brit and the actress still trailing him in their antique Plymouth. They had better taste in cars than he would've guessed. He hit the brake hard and made a sharp turn into the lot. Made sure to park in a place Sam couldn't see if he was standing at the window, waiting. Showtime. He popped the trunk, loaded up with weapons, and headed in.

As he made his way through the empty halls and stairwell, he forced himself to think only of moving forward, listening for trouble at every step. The time for hesitation had passed. Nothing happened when he swiped his keycard and pushed open the door to their room, but all was dark inside. He swore under his breath. Sam might've left for some reason, or he could have a nice ambush waiting in there for him. Unable to hear anything over the sputtering sound of the air conditioner, he felt for the light switch with one hand and readied his pistol with the other.

The lights flicked on. Sam glanced up at him from his seat at the desk. He looked awful—his cheek bruised, barely restrained panic in the set of his jaw. But at least he was alone. Sitting alone in the dark. Yeah, that was natural.

"Hey, Sammy." Dean maintained his grip on the gun. "What the hell are you doing?"

Sam shrugged. A few things were set out on the surface in front of him—a cross, a knife, one of their holy water vials, and a bottle of whiskey. He closed his hand around the cross. "A vamp attacked me tonight."

"You got turned." But the cross didn't smoke against his brother's skin.

"That's the funny thing. Far as I can tell, she didn't touch me." His tone was measured, deliberate, as if he'd already run through the same points many times. "We fought. She knocked me out. I woke up hours later in the same spot, alive and well. That's not—it's not right, Dean."

She? Dean didn't believe the story, but for the moment, he'd play along. "Something could've spooked it."

"Right." Sam uncorked the vial and took a swig of holy water, then swiped the silver blade against his arm. Red blood welled from the cut, and he winced. Dean waited until he spoke again. "You know what I'm thinking?"

"No idea."

"Maybe my blood wasn't to her taste. Maybe it's not human." He met Dean's gaze. "There's been something wrong. Ever since—since I came back—I didn't feel. I couldn't care about anything. Not like I was a demon, or evil, exactly. Like I was empty."

"You let that wolf turn me. Give me one good reason to even listen to you." He watched Sam's face, daring him to deny it. Sam didn't. So now it was out. That one lie, at least, had come to its end. A surprising rage swept through him. It was all he could do to keep himself from pulling the trigger right then and there. Somehow he'd still been running on the hope that he'd imagined the betrayal, hallucinated it as the disease and its cure ran through his body. Anyone who could stand there and smirk while some monster attacked him was no brother of his.

"It's changed. Tonight. I don't know why, or how, but I'm feeling, all right. I feel like shit." Sam shook his head. With his shoulders hunched and brow furrowed, he looked more genuine than he had in a while, not that looks meant much. "I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to hurt you, just get at the wolves, but … you're right, you can't trust me. _I_ can't trust me. Maybe you should just get it over with." He nodded at the gun.

Dean steeled himself. "We've gotta figure out what the hell you are first."

His phone rang, and he fished it out of his pocket. For a second, Sam's expression became a lot more readable—the universal squint for, _Are you really going to take that right now?_.

It was Wesley. "Hey," Dean said.

"Is everything under control?"

"Yeah, he's up here. Says he's some kind of magic sociopath. Hasn't killed me yet. You better bring the chains."

. . .

"'A magic sociopath,'" Cordelia repeated, maybe a bit loudly. Her voice echoed in the stairwell.

"That's what he said." With every step Wesley took, the chains in his bag clinked.

"If they don't give us some lead on Angel, I'm going on strike." Any other week, she'd be happy enough to babysit the hunk and his sketchy brother, but she had her priorities straight. Not being killed easily trumped hot guys. If she hadn't learned that a long time ago, she'd never have made it out of Sunnydale.

They found the brothers' room on the third floor. Judging by the smudges on the walls and the vomit-colored carpeting, the motel might've been even worse than the one Wesley had chosen. Cordelia knocked, and after a minute Dean opened the door. He gave them a humorless smile as he ushered them into the room. "Cordelia, Wesley, meet Sam."

The man in the chair looked up at them. He had a few cuts and bruises and all the menace of a kicked puppy.

"Did you fight?" Wesley asked, unpacking the shackles.

Dean brandished a pair of handcuffs. "Nah, he says he tussled with a vamp earlier. I just punched him a couple times."

Of course he had.

"Ah, right." Wesley frowned. "A vampire?"

"Think he's lying. He says it was a chick."

Sam held out his arms for the cuffs. "I'm not lying."

Did Dean seriously believe that there could be only one vampire in this city? "Wait a sec," Cordelia said. "I mean, we've just heard from Dean here, and for all we know he's totally lying, no offense. Sam, if you're not in fact a dangerous resurrected sociopath, you'd better speak up now." He shrugged. "Okay, that's not a denial." She picked up a leg manacle. It wasn't so long ago that she and Wesley had used it to strap Angel to his bed. Happier days.

"Whoa." Dean scowled. "You said you were in this with me."

She rolled her eyes. "This looks pretty shady, you know. I had to test out the situation. You won. Congrats."

"You can't trust a thing that comes out of his mouth."

"Well, of course—" Wesley began.

"Who says I'm trusting anybody?" Cordelia snapped the manacle around Sam's ankle and attached the other end to the bolted leg of the desk. His only protest came in the form of pointedly miserable slouching.

"You have no clue what kind of things we're dealing with here," Dean said.

That did it. Mister Big Shot Hunter, acting like his demon possession stories were so impressive. Sure, they had the fame angle going for them, but she had seen her town mayor turn into a giant snake. She looked Dean in the eye. "Oh, really. One apocalypse. That's impressive. You see one little failed apocalypse, and you think you know everything there is—"

"Cordelia! Dean! That's enough." Sam sat up, an annoyed look crossing his face. "This isn't really the time."

Normally Cordelia wouldn't stand for being cut off by some guy with drummer hair, but Dean's reaction made it worth it. He went slack-jawed. "What the hell," he said. "Did you just try to boss me around?"

"Sorry. I'm stressed." And Sam was back to sulking. For a second, though—well, it had been weird. People usually had to spend more than a minute in Cordelia's company before they gained the courage to yell at her.

Wesley cleared his throat. "Let's hear about this vampire, then. It was a woman?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "She called herself Drusilla."


	10. More Than Zero

_Drusilla_. Cordelia barely suppressed a groan. That psycho just had to haul her bony undead ass back to California. She was probably torturing Angel as they spoke, or making him play tea party. Or both. She could've followed Sam home to snack on his friends, but if that were the case, Cordelia guessed they'd be equally screwed no matter they did.

Sam told the whole story quickly enough. He had run across Drusilla after tracking a couple of disappearances. She talked crazy, they fought, and his memory got a little blurry thanks to his blackout. The moment he woke up, every shitty thing he'd done in the past year flooded through his head, and his small heart grew three sizes or whatever. Cordelia listened to it all, anguished pauses included, but she couldn't stop wondering what it meant for Angel. One of those people had gone missing, Sam said, days before Angel did. That didn't exactly rule out Angelus getting free, but it made it pretty clear that he hadn't called Drusilla to town after the bloodbath started. She had come for him first.

"I don't know why she didn't kill me," Sam said.

Cordelia tried to give him a reassuring smile. "Maybe she's just not into reheated food."

Dean walked to the window and glanced out over the motel lot. "He's bullshitting. Knew I was onto him, so he made this up to keep me from dealing with the problem." He'd repeated that a few times already. He had to be trying to convince himself, keep from hoping for too much.

"Not necessarily. I—I've come across that name in my research. Drusilla," Wesley said. As his lies went, it sounded marginally plausible. "One of Angelus's bloodline. She traveled with him, before he was cursed. And the detail about the dolls, well, that's quite accurate."

"Family reunion, huh?" Dean faced them again. "All right. Maybe he met this Drusilla. Sure doesn't sound like a real name to me, but I've got an open mind. That doesn't prove a thing about him," he pointed at his brother, "being any less of a monster now than when he fed me to the goddamn wolves." His voice turned uneven as he talked. So much hurt and anger in it that it shocked her.

The hunter was hanging by a thread. She hadn't realized just how bad it was.

"Hey," she said, "I get it. Right now we have a story, nothing else. But we're going to get to the bottom of this."

Dean sat down on one of the beds and dropped his head into his hands. "Whatever you say, kid."

Wesley looked about ready to join the angst circle. She kicked his foot. "Do something," she whispered.

"Right." He gingerly sat on the other bed, closer to the desk, and pulled out his notepad. "Sam, other than the, ah, emotional aspect, what changes did you notice? After your resurrection, and tonight."

"Since I got back from," Sam said, and paused, "from Hell, I haven't slept. Ever. I don't know if that's different now. Getting knocked out isn't exactly the same thing."

That made Dean look up. "You don't _sleep_?"

"I've been pretending."

"Shit," he said. It did sound pretty creepy, especially if they'd been sharing motel rooms the whole time. Which, to be honest, was a little weird in itself.

Wesley frowned and made a note. "But you haven't noticed any other physical changes?"

"I guess not."

"Well, that's unusual," he said, brilliant scholar of magic and mystical forces that he was. "I know this might be sensitive territory, but I'm afraid you'll have to tell us more about your time in Hell."

"He doesn't remember," Dean said.

"I do now." Sam stared down at his hands. "It came back to me tonight."

Cordelia winced. Now on top of everything else, they'd have to deal with Hellboy's PTSD. Not exactly her specialty. Back when she and Xander were dating and he used to freak out about almost dying, and seeing people die, and so on, she'd just tell him to call her back after he pulled himself together. And it had to be worse being Satan's roommate than Buffy's token loser friend.

Dean snorted. "Right. And you haven't said anything about it until this minute."

"Because if you were in my shoes, you'd tell all about it right away," Sam said, a hint of sarcasm in his tone. "Dean. I'm not lying. I just don't know how to prove it to you." He shifted in the chair, and his chains clinked. "I didn't mention the memories because I'm still working through them. I can't even guess how much time I spent down there. It feels kind of, I don't know, distant, for all the sense that makes." He shot an uncertain glance at Wesley and Cordelia. "Does it make any sense to you guys?"

"It very well might," Wesley said, closing his notepad, "but I need more information. From sources other than you."

Time to make their exit, apparently. Let the brothers sort out their own traumas. "Research," she supplied.

Wesley nodded. "Yes. Exactly. Research."

"Hitting the books."

"We'll be in touch."

"In the meantime, don't kill each other," she said. "Get some sleep. As long as that's, like, physically possible. You guys look really rough."

. . .

Dean watched the door close behind Cordelia and Wesley. The silence in their wake felt suffocating. Until he knew the truth for sure, he couldn't talk with Sam about Hell. It might be the ultimate mind game, forcing him to relive his own stint there. Just the last couple minutes had sent his pulse into overdrive. He took a few long breaths and tried to force the flashes of pain and guilt out of his mind. That was all in the past. They had enough problems in the here and now without dredging it up.

"How much you want to bet we won't be seeing Velma and Daphne again?" he said, once he thought his voice wouldn't give him away.

Sam shrugged. "They seemed nice, and they chained me up really well."

"Yeah, that was kinda weird." Dean took out his phone. "Bobby's probably thinking we killed each other."

"Maybe you should check up on Kate, too."

"Kate?"

"The detective. Kate Lockley."

"Didn't realize you two were on a first name basis."

"She could be in danger," Sam said. His concern sounded real enough. "She's tracking this thing down, and she's going in blind."

Dean had been worrying about her himself, until this Sam business crowded everything else out. Whatever she knew, or thought she did, she couldn't take on vamps like Angelus and his brood alone. But with any luck, she'd be calling it a night soon and going back to the relative safety of her home. She seemed too smart and paranoid to invite a vampire inside. "I don't exactly have her number," he said. "So I phone the station, and then what, tell them Detective Lockley should watch out for crazy Victorian chicks? Besides, she thinks I'm a lawyer. Anything I say, she'll probably do the opposite."

"A lawyer?" A confused wrinkle crossed Sam's forehead. "There still has to be something you can do."

He was falling way too easily into their old way of talking. "It's a bit soon for you to be playing the angel on my shoulder, don't you think?" he said. "You called me, I'm here, and I'm going to bed. Like the girl said, try not to kill me." The words came out all wrong. Tired, strained. He pulled up Bobby's number, and his thumb hovered over the dial button. "Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"On the off chance you're really you, welcome back."

. . .

Cordelia waited until they entered the stairwell to start talking. In a place like this, the Dysfunction Brothers could probably hear everything that happened on their floor. "Okay, what's with the fleeing? Pretty sure we could've wrung a whole lot more out of the guy."

"I have a theory already," Wesley said. "A minute more in that room, and I would've felt obliged to share it."

"Sharing is caring, Wes."

"Not before we've considered the implications."

She had a theory of her own. Sam's tortured monologue had seemed awfully familiar. In particular, the sudden, overwhelming wave of guilt. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Most likely." They reached the bottom of the stairs, and he held open the door for her. "But we're biased. We need to come up with alternative explanations."

Alternatives, alternatives. Now that she wasn't focused on smuggling in a bunch of dungeon tools, she could really appreciate the grossness of the lobby. They passed a bowl of bruised apples and overripe bananas on their way out. She shrugged. "Well, they're down with the Jesusy stuff, right? Maybe he ate some fruit."

"What?"

"You know, magic fruit, teaches you the difference between good and evil."

"Adam and Eve weren't sociopaths."

"Weren't they, though? Clinically speaking?"

They walked out to the car. No vampires or demons attacked. Score one for the team. Cordelia slid into the driver's seat, and Wesley buckled up next to her.

"That poor, lucky bastard," he said with a sigh. "He got his soul back."

"Yeah. He definitely did."


End file.
